The views expressed in these blog posts are those of the author and not of the Beacon News.

Sheila Casey
Sheila Casey is a DC based journalist. Her opinion pieces have been published by the Chicago Sun Times, Reuters, The Denver Post, Common Dreams and The Rock Creek Free Press.

The deep state does not respond to FOIA requests
Saturday, August 22, 2009

Published in the September, 2009, Rock Creek Free Press

In an attempt to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11, citizen investigator Aidan Monaghan has filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with federal agencies such as the FBI, SEC, Department of the Navy, and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Agency after agency has refused to comply with his requests, instead claiming that the information cannot be found, does not exist, was never properly filed, or even, from the FAA, that it was simply “not in a position to release said records at this time.”
The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law by President Johnson in 1966. It mandates that information held by federal agencies must be made available to any citizen requesting it, unless that information is exempt. The Act specifies nine reasons why any given piece of information could be exempt, such as invasion of personal privacy, trade secrets, anything related to the supervision or regulation of financial institutions, and anything that could compromise either law enforcement or national security. In addition, the FBI has put an exemption on all of their 9/11 information and will release information only if compelled to do so by a lawsuit, of which Monaghan has filed two.
Despite the persistent stonewalling, Monaghan has turned up some interesting discrepancies. While it was widely reported in the media, such as by USA Today, that the flight data recorder (FDR) also known as the “black box,” for American Airlines flight 77 (the plane that allegedly hit the Pentagon on 9/11) was found at 4 am on September 14, 2001, the file containing the FDR data was dated over four hours earlier. In other words, we are asked to believe that the data from the FDR was downloaded prior to the FDR being found.

When Monaghan filed a Request for Correction with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and pointed out this disparity, his request was denied and an explanation offered that the file was created as a routine procedure prior to finding the FDR. However the FDR file indicates three parameters: date created, date modified, and date accessed. The “date created” and “date modified” fields are both listed as 11:45:38 pm on September 13, 2001, indicating that no data was added later, after the FDR was found. The “date accessed” field is blank.

This is, Monaghan says, “sufficient reason to wonder if the information is faked.”
Monaghan has also established that the NTSB does not have either serial or part numbers for the FDRs from American Airlines flight # 77 or United Airlines flight # 93 (which allegedly crashed in Shanksville, PA). This is highly unusual, in fact, according to Monaghan, there is only one other occasion in the past 20 years when the NTSB report for a airplane crash did not contain the part and serial numbers for the FDR. That was, oddly enough, exactly ten years earlier, on September 11, 1991, when a Continental Express flight broke up in mid-air, killing 14 people, when the horizontal stabilizer failed. The accident was blamed on the negligence of Continental’s maintenance and inspection crew.
The NTSB’s own handbook indicates that the part number and serial number of the FDR are required for data readout of the FDR. The NTSB did not have this information, giving us another reason to question how the FDR data was created.
Other researchers have raised serious doubts about flight # 77. The fact that the file for American Airlines flight 77 FDR was created before the AA 77 FDR was found, was first reported on the forum for Pilots for 9/11 Truth in August of 2007, but with a timestamp of six hours earlier than reported by Monaghan. Pilots for 9/11 Truth have also concluded that the FDR data released by the NTSB has the plane flying too high to hit the Pentagon.
Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) have interviewed numerous people who saw the plane approach the Pentagon on 9/11 and have demonstrated that the plane could not have caused the damage at the building, and must have flown over it. RCFP ran an extensive story about CIT in the April, 2009 issue.
Monaghan also uncovered a discrepancy that suggests that either the FAA or Popular Mechanics writers are lying. Monaghan filed a FOIA with the FAA requesting data about the number of times the FAA had asked NORAD to intercept an aircraft in three specific years, but received a reply stating that the FAA does not track or record that information, and that they “have no records responsive to your request.”
But on page 22 of the 2006 Popular Mechanics book Debunking 9/11 Myths, the writers quote an unnamed source at the FAA as saying that scrambles were routine, but interceptions were not—especially over the continental United States. If the FAA does not track that information, how did the FAA source know this?
Another discrepancy arose when Monaghan asked the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) for the last pre-9/11 flights of the aircraft that were allegedly destroyed on 9/11. BTS responded with a spreadsheet that showed that prior to 9/11, three of the four aircraft had not flown since December 2000. (No information was given for the plane that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon.) However a searchable online database on the BTS website shows that three of the four flights (again, no information for the Pentagon plane) flew continuously until September 11, 2001.
The list of FOIAs that Monaghan has filed which have yielded no information is long.
He asked the Secret Service for documents that reveal what time former Vice President Dick Cheney entered the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), as well as documents pertaining to the names of persons admitted to PEOC on the morning of 9/11. Reply: no records or documents pertaining to your request.

He asked the SEC for a bibliography of the investigation records that were located in the SEC’s offices on floors 11-13 in World Trade Center 7, even attaching a copy of a September 17, 2001 article in the National Law Journal which stated that SEC and EEOC investigations had been delayed due to the loss of “substantial files” for 3,000 to 4,000 cases. The reply: did not locate or identify any information responsive to your request.

In an attempt to shed light on what may have led to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, Monaghan asked the Port Authority of NY & NJ for a complete list of outsourced contract projects performed upon World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 from January 1, 2001 to September 11, 2001. Reply: no documents in Port Authority files responsive to your request. (Monaghan notes that since the Port Authority was located in WTC 1, it is possible that all files were lost that day.)

Monaghan sued the FBI to obtain “documentation revealing the process by which wreckage recovered by defendant, from the aircraft used during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was positively identified by defendant…as belonging to the said aircraft…” Reply: …there are no responsive records. The identities of the airplanes hijacked in the September 11 attacks was never in question, and, therefore, there were no records generated…

As reported in the April, 2008 RCFP, the aircraft were very much in question, as transponders were turned off and one plane, flight 77, was even lost to radar over Ohio for a time. NTSB officials are on record stating that they were involved in aircraft parts identification, and bins were set up at all three crash sites labeled “aircraft parts.”

The RCFP reported in May 2009 that explosive, unreacted thermitic material containing nano particles of aluminum and iron oxide had recently been discovered in the dust from the World Trade Center buildings that collapsed on September 11, 2001. The Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center was described in 1999 as “the only reliable source for aluminum nano-powders in the United States,” and in 2008 as "probably the most prominent US center for nano-thermite technology.”

Monaghan asked the Naval Surface Warfare Center for records about the research and development of nano-sized aluminum powders or nano-sized iron oxide powders. Reply: have not found any records responsive to your request.

Monaghan is currently trying to get more information from the FBI with Aidan Monaghan v. U.S. Dept of Justice, et al., 09-CV-0060. When you sue the FBI, Monaghan explained, you go up against the Department of Justice, since the FBI is a division of the DoJ.

This lawsuit asks for information about the wreckage recovered from American Airlines flight # 77 and United Airlines flight # 93, the flight management computers and multi-mode receivers used on all four aircraft, the serial numbers for the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders for AA77 and UA93, communications between the four hijacked aircraft, information regarding the presence of bombs in the World Trade Center towers, three days of logs of the recovery of human remains from the crash sites of AA77 and UA93, an audio copy of the cockpit voice recorder from UA93, and information about phone calls placed from AA11, UA175, AA77 and UA93, including the existence of seatback or Airfone telephones for passenger use on all four aircraft.

Monaghan admits that he is now “running out of ideas for FOIAs for file.” As recently as September 2007, the FBI denied Monaghan’s FOIAs under the law enforcement exemption, claiming that this is an “ongoing investigation” and that information related to identifying the aircraft used on 9/11 “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if the FOIA is just a lot of theatre for public consumption to provide a perception that yes, government is accessible, it’s transparent,” said Monaghan. “For two years now I’ve tried to pull as much 9/11 info from the federal government as I can, and the most noteworthy thing I’ve found is the absence of information. Material that should be there just isn’t.”

Monaghan is married, lives in Las Vegas and works in risk management and public safety for a large commercial property that gets a lot of public traffic. He was educated as an electrical engineer.